


You're Still Here

by stitchcasual



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: All hurt no comfort, M/M, Minor Prompto Argentum/Ignis Scientia, Post-Game, minor gladiolus/lunafreya
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 07:51:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19080676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchcasual/pseuds/stitchcasual
Summary: The end is here. Noct goes to fulfill his destiny and Gladio is left alone.Yet somehow time still moves forward and life goes on.





	You're Still Here

**Author's Note:**

> This work was inspired by the Poets of the Fall song of the [same name](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IOQUauRTmLA)

They waited. It was better for Gladio’s nerves that they couldn’t stop moving, couldn’t stop fighting as they waited, but he still found himself looking back at the citadel every spare moment he could. Noctis was in there alone. Gladio gritted his teeth against the instincts that screamed at him to rush to Noctis’s side, that his place was there as his Shield. But they all knew that they couldn’t help Noct now. Either he banished the darkness...or he didn’t.

Ignis caught on first to Gladio’s reluctance to move farther than thirty feet from the foot of the stairs where they’d parted from Noctis. He reigned Prompto in with a quiet word, and together the three of them held court before the citadel, engaging all comers. Ignis’s daggers flashed, the elemancy on them flickering as quickly as Gladio’s temper; Prompto danced behind and between them, the flares from his gun tiny sunrises in Gladio’s peripheral vision. Gladio called on every scrap of patience he’d learned over the years of training under his father, the lessons from Cor and Gilgamesh, the experience he’d gained through being at Noctis’s side and through the ten years he hadn’t, and he blocked for Ignis and Prompto like he would for Noct, harnessing his rage into deadly precise downswings of his sword.

And they waited. Prompto faltered first, dashing out a little too far to get a kill shot, a little too close to an incoming daemon for Gladio to block, and Ignis ran to him, leaping high to skewer the daemon with his lance before reaching down to Prompto and pulling him to his feet, bringing him back to their line of defense. They didn’t fight like this often any more, as a cohesive unit; each of them had duties and responsibilities they’d taken on over the last ten years that kept them apart from each other for long stretches of time, but today it was like no time had passed. No years came between them, no distance. They fought as they had when the four of them traveled together in the days of the Regalia, one mind and one spirit and one purpose.

Gladio missed a scything attack from a daemon, raising his shield just a moment too late. He fell to his knees. Something bright soared over his head and for a moment he dared to hope… But the daemon before him exploded into sharp pieces scattering across the courtyard and Prompto touched his shoulder, shuffling the alea aside to better haul Gladio up. Ignis supported his other side, and they breathed together for a blessed empty minute before the next daemon approached.

And they waited.

The tide slowed, trickled, stopped.

“Ignis?” Gladio called.

“We’ve still an hour yet,” Ignis said, interpreting Gladio’s question correctly. How Ignis knew the time even after ten years without the sun mystified Gladio, but it was a damn useful skill to have now. Ignis stood with his head tilted, alert for any hint of coming trouble, but his hands relaxed around the hilts of his daggers. Prompto’s movements slowed down too, and he took up position beside Ignis, their arms touching. Gladio looked again to the citadel. He leaned against his sword and let himself watch without tearing his eyes away; Ignis or Prompto would let him know about any daemons if he didn’t feel them come near himself.

He believed in Noctis, fully and without reservation: he had no doubts that his King would succeed in what he had been chosen to do. That didn’t mean that some small, selfish part of him didn’t wish that something would go wrong, that he’d see Noct alive again, descending the stairs toward him. They hadn’t had enough time together, and it felt fundamentally unfair that he still be required to give up the person who meant more to him than anything else in the world. It was supposed to be his life exchanged for the King’s, or what was the point of everything he’d been through?

Gladio straightened and dismissed his sword to stretch his arms. The clatter of the weapon on the stone paving froze his heart, and he looked down at the sword, his head moving as though he swam through molasses. The sword lay there, still and unassuming, and Gladio’s mouth opened in a silent prayer. It couldn’t be. To his left, he could see Prompto flick his hand then tap Ignis’s arm a few times in quick succession when the gun stayed in his grip.

Ignis bowed his head. “It is done.”

“No!”

Gladio ran. He abandoned his sword where it had fallen and took the stairs up to the citadel two and three at a time. He knew what had happened, Noctis had fulfilled his destiny, but maybe...maybe there was still time to save him, to bring him back.

He pulled up short on the threshold to the throne room, arrested by the slumped figure he saw atop the dias. He couldn’t make out details from this far away, but he’d know Noctis anywhere, no matter how he wanted it not to be true. His feet carried him across the room and up the stairs without input from his brain, his steps echoing in the emptiness.

At the first landing, he hesitated. There was no denying from here that Noctis sat the throne, his father’s sword through his chest. Gladio ground his teeth. It wasn’t enough that Noct had to sacrifice himself; apparently it had to be painful as well. And he hadn’t been there.

He set his foot on the next stair. If he had been there, though, he wasn’t sure if he would have been able to keep himself from performing his duty and shielding his King. He would have kept the world in darkness to save him.

Another step. Gladio raised his head. He would walk tall. He could at least do that for Noct at the end of everything.

Another step. He couldn’t hear anything over the deafening sound of his boots on the stairs.

Another step and he knelt by Noctis’s side, unsure how he ascended the stairs without realizing. He picked up Noct’s hand from where it rested on the arm of the throne and held it between both of his, bowing his head to press his lips against limp fingers. Then he set it back and stood in front of the throne.

“I’m not sorry if this messes everything up,” he said and grabbed the hilt of the sword, drawing it out and tossing it aside. Noct’s body fell forward into Gladio’s arms, and Gladio crumpled to the ground and held him close, safe, until the dawn curled around the edges of the rubble of the citadel, mocking him with its warmth. So it truly was done. He felt cold. Even as the sun rose higher and its light crept over his body as he sat, unmoving around Noct, all he felt was ice. He saw Ignis and Prompto when they arrived, stopping short of the stairs. Prompto turned and buried his face in Ignis’s shoulder, his gun dropping to the hard floor. Ignis stared up at Gladio, at the throne, and Gladio couldn’t meet his gaze. 

  
  


They held a funeral for Noctis, and for everyone else who’d died that they hadn’t had the time to mourn. King Regis, Clarus, Nyx and the other members of the Kingsglaive. Ravus. Jared. Lunafreya. Gladio carried one side of the litter that held Noct’s body; Ignis and Prompto held the other. They walked through streets choked with rubble under the noon sun, allowing citizens from all over Lucis to say goodbye to their king. Gladio hated them. After the procession passed, these people would go rebuild their lives, their homes, and forget in time who had made that possible for them. But he could never forget. He had no home now.

He stood vigil over Noctis’s body as visiting heads of state came to pay their respects. Ignis handled the pleasantries; Gladio had turned to stone, hands clasped behind his back, feet shoulder width apart, eyes unfocused. He ate when Prompto pestered him with food, lay himself down but did not sleep when Ignis reminded him he needed to. And when construction of the tomb that would forever shroud Noct from him was completed and the Chosen King laid to his eternal rest, Gladio left Insomnia.

He trekked across the country, slept under the stars, and talked aloud to Noctis as though he were still there. He explained the finer points of hunting meat for food that Noct had never had the patience to learn, even though he could spend hours fishing. He reminded the air about how to properly set up a tent, which Noct would always watch him do before skipping inside to sleep with a smile of thanks. Camping alone at havens, Gladio finally spoke aloud all the things he’d meant to say to Noctis and never did, assuming both that he’d have the time and that what he needed to say was already understood.

He spent spring in Tenebrae, walking through fields full of the same flowers Noct had shown him from the book he shared with Luna. He had never met his Queen, though he still felt her loss keenly as his fingers brushed against the petals. “Take care of him,” he whispered, holding one of the flowers in his hand. Rays of golden sunset touched the rocks at his back that evening as he camped, creating a pillar of light and stealing his breath. He wasn’t a flower man, but he carried that one with him until it wilted and dried and crumbled into powder.

He took hunting jobs, anything he could complete on his own. Iris called on occasion, requesting help with her own hunts that he knew she could handle fine by herself. He never turned her down, though. The first autumn he passed with her hunting large bounties and watching the leaves color and fall was the closest he could recall coming to peace in years.

Ignis and Prompto convinced him to come to the city over winters, and he watched them rebuild it from nothing into a beacon of hope. He was proud of them, of what they’d accomplished, and jealous of what they had, holding hands and trading glances. He lived in Noct’s old apartment, the building only halfway damaged during the Niflheim invasion a lifetime ago. It didn’t hurt the way he expected, just ached. He napped on Noct’s old couch, ran sword drills on Noct’s old balcony, and didn’t cook in Noct’s old kitchen. He taught self-defense classes to keep himself busy when Prompto and Ignis didn’t occupy his time.

His hair began to gray one year between leaving the city and meeting with Iris. She cooed over the salt and pepper, threading her fingers through it as he ducked his head away. Prompto laughed and called him “old man” when he came back after the fall though his hair had started fading before Gladio’s.

There came a spring not long after that when Gladio couldn’t bend to pick the flowers in Tenebrae. The hunts Iris picked for them that autumn were trivial beasts, yet he still trailed behind her, winded before her, and he knew. He said his goodbyes to her after winter’s hold already gripped the land, later than he usually left, and she knew. He clasped Ignis’s hand and Prompto’s shoulder when they greeted him in the city, and they knew.

He took his final pilgrimage to the tomb of the king and laid his sword and shield next to the sarcophagus carved with Noctis’s likeness. He sat down, too slowly, too carefully, and rested his head against the stone behind him. He slowed his breaths, evening them out, and closed his eyes. This was where he belonged, now after all this time.

“I’m ready.”

The King’s Shield had come home.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first work in the fandom and I've only played the game once through, so far, so I may have accidentally taken a few liberties with how things happen at the end without realizing, but the angst is Too Good this way so hopefully I didn't get anything too wrong...
> 
> Gladiolus is my favorite boy, and I look forward to torturing him more as I probably write additional works while I replay the game soon. This piece is a fairly accurate representation of what I like to explore so *finger guns* 
> 
> I'm on [twitter](http://twitter.com/stitchcasual) and [tumblr](http://stitchcasual.tumblr.com) at the same name (#branding) if you want to come say hi, yell at me for everything I just wrote, or cry about the game.


End file.
